Island's crack connection starts in Mississippi town

Saturday

Nov 3, 2007 at 2:00 AM

By Jason Graziadei I&M Staff Writer

Rosedale, Mississippi is more than 1,500 miles away from Nantucket. And in economic terms, the two places might as well be a world apart. But the poor Delta town of 2,400 and the wealthy Massachusetts island of 10,000 are inexplicably linked by a tight-knit circle of crack cocaine dealers who have made their way to Nantucket from the deep South.

Since May of 2000, the Nantucket Police Department has investigated 35 separate individuals from Rosedale for suspected crack cocaine dealing in Nantucket. Police sources say the Rosedale connection accounts for nearly all of the crack dealing on the island, and investigations of people from Rosedale and surrounding Mississippi towns make up 70 percent of the total drug investigations by the police department.

“It’s an evil underground subculture that has made its way to our town,” Detective Jerry Mack said. “(Rosedale) is where this stuff is coming from, it’s all from that area. It’s amazing how a little town like Rosedale can be connected to a place like Nantucket.”

Police say the suspected dealers’ connection to Nantucket is unclear, but the motivation they have to come to the island is easy to identify: money. What a crack dealer can sell for $10 or $20 in Mississippi – or even Hyannis – can yield anywhere from $50 to $100 in Nantucket.

“Crack is a new player. But it’s devastating the lives of some people out there. Their whole life ends up revolving around it,” Detective Jerry Adams said.

Crack is the rock form of powdered cocaine, and is sold in small, relatively inexpensive doses. It is smoked, which delivers large quantities of cocaine directly to the lungs, producing effects comparable to intravenous injection. The effects are felt almost immediately and produce very intense feelings of euphoria, but do not last as long as a powder high.

“The money they make is unbelievable,” Mack said. “They caught the market and knew it was here. You can’t even get these prices in Hyannis. The demand is there and they’re bringing up the supply and making tons of money. But they will get caught this summer if they come up here again.”

Anthony Gibson, the director of the Rosedale Police Department, said he is aware of the problem and is taking steps to stop the flow of crack dealers leaving Rosedale for Nantucket.

“They leave here looking poor and come back with a lot of money and nice cars,” Gibson said. “We have busted some of them and we’re investigating a lot of them, but it’s something that has been happening for years. I haven’t figured out why Nantucket gets a lot of these guys. There’s someone up there they’re connected with.”

Investigations by the Nantucket Police Department have so far resulted in the arrests of 12 suspects from Rosedale, and there are currently five default warrants outstanding for others. There have been two convictions resulting from those arrests, and several of the cases are still working their way through the courts.

Through arrests and raids on several island homes, the Nantucket Police Department has seized close to 200 grams of crack cocaine since 2000.

Indictment

On Monday, Eric A. Griffin, 31, of Rosedale, was indicted by a Nantucket County grand jury on charges of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute in a school zone.

Griffin, along with James E. Johnson Jr., 40, was nabbed during a raid on Aug. 2, 2003 at 23 Bartlett Road. The raid resulted in the seizure of 14 “rocks” of crack cocaine with a street value of $1,400, along with crack pipes, plastic bags and $5,000 in cash. After police busted down the door of the house, Griffin fled the property on foot and ran about 100 yards before police caught him. After the raid, Det. Adams said Griffin was “the main supplier for the island for crack cocaine.”

Griffin later missed a January court appearance because he was shot in Mississippi during an alleged drug transaction.

Most recently, a Jan. 5 raid at 89 Hinsdale Road netted six rocks of crack with a street value of around $600, a small amount of marijuana, $890 in cash and plastic bags, scales, crack pipes, small butane torches and other drug paraphernalia. Three people, including Charles Banks, 24, of Rosedale, were arrested during the raid.

Police believe Banks was one of the major players in the island’s cocaine trade prior to the raid, filling the void created by Griffin’s arrest. Although he was initially charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, the charges were reduced to possession of cocaine after Banks agreed to serve 90 days in the Barnstable House of Corrections. In another recent case against a Rosedale suspect, charges of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute against Jeremy Starks, 23, were dismissed last week when Judge W. James O’Neill threw out the charges against him after ruling police had conducted an illegal search of his car. On Feb. 24, officers stopped Starks in a red Mercury Tracer after he left what police called a “known drug house” on Atlantic Avenue. Although a search of the vehicle revealed 11 baggies of powdered cocaine and one bag of crack, as well as $1,100 in cash, Judge O’Neill ruled the police did not have probable cause to make the stop in the first place.

Law-abiding citizens

Yet the Mississippi migration has sent more than crack dealers to Nantucket. Long before Detective Mack started noticing the trend in May 2000, there were good citizens such as Perry Butler, who came to Nantucket more than 18 years ago in search of a better living on the island. Butler, who operates the sewer truck for the Department of Public Works, said he knows that there are some bad people from his hometown who are involved in drugs, but that shouldn’t give people like him a bad name.

“It doesn’t really bother me because I don’t sell drugs or do drugs, and everyone knows me,” said Butler, who heard about the island through a friend at the Steamship Authority and got his first island job at the Jared Coffin House. “We’ve got a lot of people that are doing wrong, and at the same time, it makes all of us look bad. But everyone from Mississippi isn’t bad. You’ve got people here from Rosedale who’ve been here a long time who are working hard and not dealing drugs.”

Richard Moore, another former Rosedale resident, came to Nantucket in 1987 after a friend offered him a job and a place to stay. Now a driver for P&M Reis Trucking, Moore said people have been coming to Nantucket from Rosedale for more than 30 years, and he estimates that there are 30 to 40 year-round residents originally from Rosedale on the island.

“The majority of people who leave Rosedale are here to work,” Moore said. “It’s unfortunate with the drugs because some people won’t even rent to a person from Rosedale now. But you can’t say everyone from Rosedale is selling drugs. It bothers me because what they do shouldn’t affect me.”

Unfair treatment

Mack said he is aware of the law-abiding population from Rosedale and recognizes that those people should not be treated unfairly because of the actions of others from the same town.

“The people who have been here and are established, they work as hard as anyone else and there’s no problems with them because they’re playing by the rules,” Mack said. “They’re sick of seeing what’s happening and the reputation that Rosedale is getting. It isn’t about those people, it’s the young ones who come up and are money-hungry who are the problem.”

However, both Moore and Butler believe that on occasion the police have unfairly targeted some people from Rosedale and other Mississippi towns, and it hasn’t just been recently. Moore recalled an incident in 1991 when the cab he was in with several friends was pulled over by numerous police cruisers and he was ordered out of the car at gunpoint. The police had mistaken one of his friends for a suspect who had a history of firearms offenses.

“I still believe to this day that if I had slipped or something coming out of the cab I would have got my head blown off,” Moore said. “The police have to find a better way to deal with this. It’s become harassment, not investigation. If you’re from Rosedale, you don’t stand a chance because as soon as you get off the boat or leave a nightclub, you will get stopped or followed.”

Rosedale:Land of the blues

Rosedale is located in the Mississippi Delta, an area steeped in the country blues that helped give rise to rock n’ roll. Blues legend Robert Johnson sang about Rosedale in “Traveling Riverside Blues.” Eric Clapton, then with Cream in the late 1960s, picked up the Rosedale lyric for “Crossroads,” his version of another Robert Johnson song.

On Nantucket, individuals from other Mississippi Delta towns such as Shelby, Shaw, Benoit and Greenville, all in the vicinity of Rosedale and in Bolivar County, have also been investigated for crack dealing. With an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent and 28.3 percent of its residents living below the poverty line, Bolivar County is one of the most economically depressed regions in the country.

In Rosedale, where according to the federal Census Bureau more than 43 percent of families live below the poverty line and 40 percent do not have a high school diploma, the lure of substantial profits from the drug trade can often be too much to resist. Rosedale has an unemployment rate of 10.3 percent, about double the national average.

According to Butler, when someone like him returns to Rosedale from Nantucket to visit friends or family, people want to know where he’s been and what Nantucket is all about. He believes that is the way more people from Rosedale have come to Nantucket, for both illegal and legitimate reasons.

“When you come home, people ask where you’ve been and that’s how more people come here – through word of mouth,” Butler said.

“Rosedale is a small town and the pay rate is minimum wage. As a kid, I was chopping cotton and getting $17 a day. It’s hard down there. There’s more people out on the streets because there’s no jobs. You have to leave to better yourself.”

Joe Smith, the narcotics investigator for the Bolivar County Sheriff’s Department, and Charles Bingham, the narcotics investigator for Cleveland, Miss., the closest city to Rosedale, both agreed that the crack pipeline from Rosedale to Nantucket does exist, and dealers are motivated by the prices they can charge in a resort community like Nantucket.

“There’s definitely a connection, we just don’t know what it is. I wish I did,” Smith said. “We’ve gotten information but we’ve never been able to make an arrest on the people leaving here or coming back from Nantucket. They tell us they’re going to work construction, but we don’t believe them.”

There have also been criminal incidents allegedly involving transients from Mississippi on Cape Cod, where a series of arson fires in Falmouth and Yarmouth in 2003 was believed to have been associated with drug activity. Individuals from Belzoni, Miss., less than 70 miles from Rosedale, are allegedly responsible for those incidents.

A “quiet little town”

Bingham added that the nature of an economically depressed town like Rosedale lends itself to drug activity, but that the actions of some individuals should not lead one to stereotype everyone from that area. “Rosedale is a small Mississippi river town and the only type of industry is agricultural,” Bingham said. “There’s no factories to speak of and jobs are at a premium. As a whole, Rosedale is a quiet little town, but it does have its share of problems. I can’t say why they’ve chosen Nantucket, but we do have ongoing investigations and I will say that we plan on hammering these guys as soon as we can.”

Any means necessary

Mack estimates that during the summer months there are anywhere from 30 to 40 individuals from the Rosedale area actively involved in the drug trade on Nantucket. He said that they get the product to the island by a variety of means; by car on the Steamship Authority ferries, or on the passenger ferries, by plane on their person, or through a “mule” – an unlikely suspect who carries the product ahead of them, or after they arrive on island and have attracted police attention.

“They come in on the boat and by plane. They try to be as unassuming as possible. They’ll put it in a baby carriage, in a backpack. They like to use female couriers,” Mack said.

According to Adams, dealers typically bring about half a kilogram (1.1 pounds) of cocaine at a time, and either drive the product up from Mississippi themselves, or obtain it from a source on the mainland in Hyannis or other New England towns like New Bedford, Mass. or Providence, R.I.

According to Mack, the profile of crack users on Nantucket runs the gamut from the unemployed poor to wealthy business owners.

“We’ve definitely got a powder crowd on the island, but there’s a whole group and generation who want crack,” Mack said. “It’s absolutely everyone from skid row addicts to businesspeople and tradespeople. They’re basically good people who are sick. Because crack is so addictive, these addicts just get sicker and sicker. It takes a genuinely evil person to supply that habit.”

Adams estimates the number of crack users on the island to be at least 200, but said that number will probably increase during the summer months with the arrival of more transients and vacationers.

“There are people who are addicted who still lead productive lives,” Adams said. “All addicts aren’t on skid row. Some people can be addicts, but they have a job and are not out committing other crimes.”

Crack doesn’t discriminate

Moses Easley, the director of the Family and Children’s Services’ Substance Abuse Program, said that after alcohol and marijuana, cocaine is the most widely-used drug on Nantucket. Easley also agreed with Mack that crack use among islanders is not confined to any one group or socioeconomic class.

“I see it across the board, from businesspeople to tradesmen and people who’ve been born and raised here,” Easley said. “The tragedy is that drugs have become indigenous to this community. Nantucket tries to view itself as being isolated from the mainland. But there is no isolation. (Crack) affects the vital organs and affects people mentally, physically and spiritually.”

Mack, who has seen the effects crack can have on addicts and recreational users, said the drug results in an all-consuming addiction that is almost impossible to break.

“The addiction drives every waking moment of their lives until they’re either dead or in rehab,” Mack said. “These people are completely paranoid, they’re always looking over their shoulder and are nervous and edgy. It’s just total devastation mentally and physically.”

While there have been some instances of violence associated with drug activity on the island, they have so far been relatively minor, including several assault and battery charges and no incidents involving gunplay. Adams said, however, that the mere presence of crack dealing creates the potential for more dangerous violence.

“The violence follows the drugs and it’s just a matter of when,” Adams said. “The potential is there and we’re lucky we haven’t had more.”

Brian Chadwick, a retired Nantucket police officer who has witnessed the influx of crack on Nantucket during his time on the force and now in his own neighborhood, said that the problem is more widespread than people realize.

“There is a problem and it’s under-recognized and I’d really like to see the police department get the support it needs,” Chadwick said. “If people see suspicious activity, they need to report it. If you let these things happen, people will think they can keep doing it. There’s been a tremendous change within the police department and there’s a proactive approach to drug enforcement, but until the courts decide that drugs are a serious problem on Nantucket, nothing will change.”

Both Chadwick and Bill Ciarmataro, founder of the anti-drug group Dads Against Drugs and a candidate for sheriff, said the Starks case is an example of the District Court failing to come down hard on drug dealers. Ciarmataro said the court’s approach has created an atmosphere where dealers know what they can get away with, and are able to survive despite the efforts of the police department.

“It’s just sending the message that this is OK and you have a judge who’s slapping people on the wrist and bartering down with these guys,” Ciarmataro said. “They’re making tons of money and wreaking havoc on the community. And to watch these guys flaunt it in your face, it’s wrong. It’s out of control.”

The flood of individuals looking to corner the market on the island has inevitably left some who have slipped through the web of law enforcement. Mack, who conducts the majority of drug investigations on Nantucket, said his department has done a good job addressing the problem with the resources it has, but he depends on the community to provide anonymous information and tips that can lead to arrests.

“We definitely need help from the community, we can’t do it all,” Mack said. “We ask people to look for transients and people coming and going all the time, or habitual short visits or cab visits. They can call the crime tip hotline (508-228-3626) and remain anonymous but be as specific as possible. Just tell us ‘this doesn’t look right or this is going on’.’”

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, crack, the free base form of cocaine, is processed by mixing powder cocaine with baking soda and water, which is then heated to create a “rock” which is smoked rather than snorted. The result is a form of cocaine which is highly addictive and can be even more harmful to users than the powder form because of its effects on the lungs and respiratory system. The high it creates is more intense than powder cocaine, but it does not last as long, usually five to ten minutes, compared to 15 to 20 minutes if it is snorted.

With the ability to constrict blood vessels and limit bleeding, pure cocaine was first used in the United States in the 1880s as a local anesthetic for eye, nose and throat surgeries, according to the government web site.

Nearly 100 years later, crack emerged as a cheaper alternative with more devastating effects. Today, approximately 8.4 million Americans 12 years old and over have reported trying crack at least once in their lifetime.

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